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Jul 17

Charts – 14 July 2013

Posted on Wednesday, July 17, 2013 by Paul in Music

After a run of twelve weeks in which the number 1 single sold over 100,000, the charts finally run out of momentum and gives us, well, a number 1 by default…

36.  Pink featuring Lily Allen – “True Love”

Well that sure sounds like a healthy relationship, doesn’t it?  This is the fourth single from her album “The Truth About Love”, which has been out since September, so by this point in the promotional cycle it’s really a matter of reminding people the album’s still out there.

The blatantly tacked on 20 seconds of Lily Allen in the bridge is… frankly odd, and weirdly out of place, not least because her segment looks likes the work of a director who had no idea what the rest of the video was going to look like or simply didn’t care.  She is on the album, though, and credited as co-writer (as “Lily Rose Cooper”, but evidently the record company decided to go for the better known name on the single release).

Allen/Cooper has two number ones to her name – “Smile” and “The Fear” – but she’s been on a hiatus from recording for quite some time now.  She hasn’t had a hit in her own right since 2009, though she appeared as a guest on Professor Green’s “Just Be Good To Green” in 2010, and got a featured artist credit when she was sampled on T-Pain’s “5 O’Clock” in 2011.

This is climbing in the midweeks, as you’d expect.

27.  Sneakbo – “Ring A Ling”

Follow up to “Zim Zimma”, which scraped the bottom end of the chart last year.  He also appears as a guest on some versions of D’Banj’s “Oliver Twist”.  The chorus is based on the 1992 single “Ting-a-Ling” by Shabba Ranks (Wikipedia says it’s a sample, but the lyrics don’t match, so I suspect it’s a re-creation).  That’s a minimal dancehall track, so it’s been pretty wildly transformed here.

This is actually pretty good, though it’s going no higher than this.  The video is a strange mixture of footage of Sneakbo doing stock hip-hop things (with zero apparent irony), and intercut footage of people wandering around a market town, and some dancers incongruously plonked in the main square of Waltham Abbey.  I’m assuming it’s meant to look odd, but it could equally be a case of director and artist with, shall we say, wildly divergent visions.

26.  Spark Productions – “Wake Me Up” 

Climbing nine places, making it a rare case of a dodgy cover lasting two weeks on the chart.  The Avicii original is now out and will inevitably be number one on Sunday.

24.  Jay-Z featuring Justin Timberlake – “Holy Grail” 

The title track from Jay-Z’s album, which enters at number 1 this week over on the album charts.  This isn’t a single, it’s just being cherrypicked.  In fact, there aren’t any official singles for this album – Jay-Z doesn’t need to bother with that sort of thing.

Kind of leaves me cold, to be honest, but it’s climbing in the midweeks.

21.  Katy B – “What Love Is Made Of”

We haven’t heard from Katy B since since “Easy Please Me” made number 25 in 2011.  (Well, she had that Coca-Cola advert with Mark Ronson in 2012, but the track didn’t make the top 40.)  This is dropping sharply in the midweeks, which is disappointing – she’s been away for over two years and returned with her second-smallest hit to date.  She ought to be a good fit for the current wave of retro dance records, too.  Admittedly, though, this is lacking something.

13.  Iggy Azalea – “Bounce”

It’s going to plunge next week, but as a follow-up to her number 17 debut hit “Work”, she should be happy enough with this.  I’d have said it’s a less obvious hit single anyway.  Not sure about the video, which doesn’t exactly help define her to a mainstream audience.

6.  Lawson featuring B.o.B. – “Brokenhearted”

Ah, the boy band with guitars.  It’s a niche, I guess.  It’s their fourth top ten hit, and an improvement on the number 13 peak of their last single “Learn to Love Again”, so they’re doing okay.  It’s promoting the special edition reissue of their album “Chapman Square”, which has been out for ages.  It’s actually not horrid as these things go, but it’s dropping ten places in the midweeks, which suggests it’s mainly the fanbase buying.

3.  Sebastian Ingrosso, Tommy Trash & John Martin – “Reload”

Blizzards!  Dragons!  Volcanic eruptions!  The video is nothing if not epic in its ambition, and wholly unrelated to anything on the soundtrack as far as I can make out.

This is Ingrosso’s second hit under his own name, following his collaboration with Alesso, “Calling (Lose My Mind)”, which made number 19 last year.  But he was also a member of the now apparently defunct Swedish House Mafia, who had six hits including the number 1 “Don’t You Worry Child”.  Like a lot of this week’s new entries, it doesn’t look to have much staying power, dropping to 8 in the midweeks.

John Martin is the Swedish House Mafia’s regular singer, and had a previous credit on the aforementioned “Don’t You Worry Child”.  And Tommy Trash is an Australian producer who’s been making records since 2007 without crossing over to the charts.

1.  Robin Thicke featuring Pharrell Williams and T.I. – “Blurred Lines” 

Returning to number one after two weeks away, sales are now starting to tail off but, well, it’s still doing over 80K, and that’s enough to fend off this week’s competition.  It won’t be there next week.

Returning to number 1 after being interrupted by two different records is rare but not unknown.  It last happened in 2010 when Bruno Mars’ “Just The Way You Are” returned to number 1 after being interrupted for three weeks by Tinie Tempah’s “Written in the Stars” and the Cee Lo Green track that the OCC like to call “Forget You”.

Over on the album chart, Jay-Z is number one… er, and that’s it.  Nothing else new at all.

 

Bring on the comments

  1. D. says:

    I don’t know how you listened to all of these songs to write this post. I tried to listen to three of them, and couldn’t bear to finish any (and I kinda like P!nk). It’s kind of like trying to read Chuck Austen’s X-Men: why bother?

  2. ferris says:

    That is a lot of Pink to sit through for a little bit of Allen. Supposedly she started recording again in 2012, with a new album possible for this year.

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